Each month in our Healthwatch Essex Journal Club, one of our Research Ambassadors shares an article that they are interested in – giving our network a chance to read, reflect, and discuss together in our WhatsApp community. It’s a space for learning, questioning, and exploring research in an informal and supportive way.
In this month’s Journal Club, Research Ambassador Ben shared one of his own articles exploring peer support work in a men’s mental health unit, from a lived experience and service user perspective. The article draws on reflective journal extracts to detail what peer support is and highlights the value of peer support work in a mental health acute unit. Ben reflects on his experiences providing peer support throughout this article and includes feedback from services users and staff.
Here are the article details for anyone that is interested in this topic:
Authors: Benjamin Thomas Gray and Matthew Sisto (2024).
Title: Providing peer support on a men’s mental health ward: A service user narrative.
Article Link: https://healthwatchessex.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Bens-Article-04.07.25.pdf
This was an insightful article which initiated great conversation, questions and reflections from our ambassadors. As always, our ambassadors’ reflections demonstrate the value of coming together to explore different topics from a range of perspectives and experiences:
“I found this article really interesting and felt it really highlighted the value of the peer support sessions. It was interesting to see Ben’s reflections as a peer support worker as well as the service user feedback. It’s made me think a lot about using reflective journals in research – I have definitely been encouraged to keep reflective logs before but have never really been sure what to do with them!” – Joe.
“I found this very educational – learning about the 10 principles of peer support, and how voice mapping can be used to help people with psychosis better understand and cope with the voices they hear. I loved the use of the metaphor that peer support is a ‘lighthouse’ that guides the way towards better health, and how you acknowledge that the process of recovery often never ends”. – Molly.
“Thanks Molly for taking the time to read it and for your kind comments”. – Ben.
“Your piece highlights not only the invaluable role of peer support workers more broadly, but also the very real, positive difference that you are making to the lives of the people you support…it raises a really interesting question about how you evidence the value and impact of peer support roles, and use some really creative methods to explore this. It’s a real privilege to read your own reflections as a peer support worker”. – Kate.
“Thank you Ben – this has given me so much food for thought… it is clear from the feedback you received that your input made an immeasurable difference to many of the patients and staff you worked with on the ward. What stands out to me the most reading this piece is the idea that individuals who experience psychosis as part of a long-term mental health condition often have a complex relationship to their condition. This complexity can really only be understood by people who experience these phenomena themselves. When these unusual experiences are labelled purely in terms of clinical symptoms or pathology, the specialities and meaning of these phenomena to the individual who is experiencing them are lost.
Questions:
- I’m interested to know what you learned or gained from your experience working as a peer support worker in the hospital?
- Do you think that there could be a role for peer support workers to work for a longer-period of time with individuals in the community to help them stay well? An outcome measure could be rates of readmission, for example”. – Hattie.
“I especially found interesting the quote that highlighted that people are not alone in their struggles and that there’s a shared journey toward better mental health. It’s important to show that people living with mental health problems can support each other through peer support”. – Maria.
“Echoing what I think most ambassadors have said, in particular your comment Hattie about the indispensable role that this article evidenced peer support has. It is really clear that the role you have makes a vital contribution to people’s lives. I thought this was also reinforced by the reflections from the service users themselves, when one said that peer support has ‘personal insight, unlike other staff, and they have experience of mental illness’. I thought this perfectly demonstrated the contribution peer support has”. – Beth.
“Thanks Beth and the group for such positive and kind feedback”. – Ben.
This month’s reflections and questions have been brilliant, they really demonstrate what our Journal Club is all about – sharing knowledge, personal experience, asking questions and building confidence in reading and exploring research!
Our Journal Club is open to all our Research Ambassadors. If you would like to become a Research Ambassador or are looking for more information, please contact our Research Manager Dr Kate Mahoney at [email protected].
We are looking forward to next month’s article, which will be shared by Research Ambassador Onyi.
Beth Pittuck,
Research Officer